FOPS AND FINE LADIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3802, 25 January 1927, Page 73

FOPS AND FINE LADIES.

It is no new thing for beauty to seek the aid of paint and powder (says the Daily Telegraph.) Dining the time of the Commonwealth, it is true, no respectable woman painted her cheeks, but when Charles II came to the throne it quickly became the fashion once more. Evelyn, the diarist, despised the practice, and Pepys declared that he loathed Nelly Gwyn and Mrs Knepp—two favourites of his—for “putting red on their faces.” According to Walpole, Lady Mary Wort-ley-Montague used very common white paint, and left it on so long that it had to be literally scraped off. The Lady Coventry of that period was often chased round the dinner table by her husband, and the paint nibbed off with a dinnernapkin. She, and many other ladies, of that time, killed themselves with the paint thev used. The ladies of the Court of Louis XV were under the impression that they were innovators when they stuck pieces of black taffeta on their faces to heighten their colour, but the fops of Queen Elizabeth’s time knew more about the. art than thev did, for they decorated their faces with' black crescents and stars, and often with lozenges. This fashion prevailed for a considerable time. Pepys seemed pleased when his wife first appeared with a natch. “My wife was very pretty to-day, this being the first time I have given her leave to wear a black patch.’ During the reign of Queen Anne, paint--1 ing and rouging were in great vogue, and 1 patches were worn to show political party I sympathies. The Whigs patched on .the right side of the cheeks, while the Tories ’ patched on the left; the neutrals had the privilege -of being able to patch Doth cheeks.